SHIFTAZINE is about celebrating what is out there, already in your life, right in front of you.
SHIFTAZINE aims to give some useful insights, to pose some questions, and to make you look at everything differently.
Hopefully, it will help shift the contemporary perception of beauty and aesthetics.
SHIFTAZINE is created by Jacqueline Hill and is associated with DESIGNASAW.

29 January 2015

27 January 2015

A little while ago a room in my home was repaired and repainted. In the course of the renovations some parts of the walls were rubbed back. What was revealed was a brief history of the colours that had been engaged over the 130 odd years of the house's life. The colours we select to surround us must reflect were we are emotionally...it simply can not.Colours are a constant necessity in our lives just like air is. Next time you are changing the colour of your space, think about what you need in life and then find a colour that will help you find it.

20 January 2015

Typography, or as most people would refer
to this art form, lettering, is ubiquitous within our contemporary
society.

The words and numbers engaged everywhere that
our eyes may settle are primarily intended for visual communication.

These
forms are vehicles for information whether from a practical sense or for a more
abstract purpose.

Typography has become a vehicle for post
modernist design over the past 30 years.

Some may say that this style of typography it is not intelligible, not
legible and therefore a pointless exercise.

Others may just enjoy looking at
the letterforms as a visual object that communicates a notion on a more
expressive or emotive level rather than an analytical, immediate, objective
level.

These pages show some examples of street
type that have not started out as an exercise of postmodern thinking…

but haves
found themself distorted into something other than their original intent.

Looking at the letterforms of most
alphabets (dreadful script fonts do not count) one can find the perfect form
and balance that has been inspired nature;

the perfect balance between negative
and positive spaces.

All of these
observations help one’s sensibilities in appreciating the world around us, in
all its forms (2D, and 3D).

The following paragraph from '100 ideas that changed Graphic Design' written by Steve Heller and Veronique Vienne addresses Street type in the form of street
slogans.

“What we read in a distracted
state, while crossing the street, for example, is not necessarily less
memorable.

In fact, what we see with our
peripheral vision might be more striking, because it is perceived by receptor
cells in the eye that are more sensitive to black and white figures and to
unexpected motion.

Furtive slogans scrawled on walls, plastered on top of
scaffolding, or stenciled on the sidewalk are just as likely to be seen as
colourful advertisements prominently located at the center of our field of
vision.”

Idea No.87 from '100 Ideas that changed Graphic Design'.

Because this area of the visual world is so important to us all, there exists
many different opinions and theories and practitioners.

All these thoughts are
valid if they assist us in coming to some understanding of what we are looking
at and how it affects us.

Willi Kunz, an important German typographer, wrote a wonderful
book entitled ‘Formation + Transformation’, and the following passage comes
from said publication,

“Regardless of what style (of typography) is pursued, an
important criterion in evaluating a design is clarity.

Good typography is clear
typography.

The designer’s intent must
be immediately clear and the design must speak with an unmistakable, clear
voice that penetrates today’s clamorous visual environment”.

The video below is a wonderful example of
what Kunz has stated.

Type must communicate.

Typography must adds value to our
world and not be yet another piece of visual rhetoric that contributes to
the confusion that surrounds us.

15 January 2015

Look at little closer at this image and you will find more than you initially thought was there. It is full of tiny details and textures and things that people have taken the time to say visually.The ‘street’ and the passive walls that define this universal
space offer themselves to artists or anyone else who feels the need to utilise
them as a platform to make a statement.

Wallism
is truly a modern movement within art. It is ubiquitous and global.

An online magazine about all the things that one thinks are ordinary but are really extraordinary. It looks at interiors, styles, foods, objects, and just about anything that constitutes a beautiful internal life.
SHIFTAZINE has been created and developed by Jacqueline Hill over the past few years while she has been working in the world of visual communication. The overall design and art direction, images and text are created by Jacqueline Hill in the most part, although like minded friends contribute to the project from time to time.
This design venture is an attempt to find out if the new formats of visual communication can be successfully combined with the established processes and dissemination of information. Its a brave new world out there, where the old rules do not really apply and the new ones are still fuzzy. So Jacqueline is keen to experiment, create, communicate while bringing SHIFTAZINE to life.
SHIFTAZINE will hopefully be a vehicle to shift people's attitudes in a positive and constructive way - to become inventive and have some fun with reinventing.